Cancun breakthrough? Everything’s relative

(Melting ice, Svalbard 2010)

Somehow I find it hard to jump up and down and rejoice about the package that’s being hailed as the big success of the Cancun climate conference. Sure, it’s great that there has been some progress on funding adaptation for vulnerable countries, forest protection, technology transfer and monitoring and verification. But what is actually going to be monitored? The Cancun package includes agreement that we need to stay below a two-degree rise in temperature. But there is widespread agreement that the emissions reductions pledged so far will not get us anywhere near that, but rather somewhere between 3 and 4 degrees. By 2015, the agreement says, this should be monitored and corrected. I wonder what is supposed to happen between now and then to make especially the big emitters USA and China “up” their commitments so radically?
There was a lot of effort put into reducing expectations ahead of the Cancun meeting. If you don’t expect too much, every little appears like a bonus. After the Copenhagen fiasco, there had to be a package coming out of Cancun which would keep the talks “on the road”. But it’s still a long, long road to go. The fact that ngos like IUCN, Germanwatch or WWF are welcoming the Cancun outcome almost make me wonder if I am being too pessimistic. They probably assume there is just no alternative, and it’s better to keep countries around the negotiating table. But although I see myself as a “born optimist”, I find it hard to feel confident that we will see emissions peak by 2020 and then be reduced steadily afterwards to get to the 2 degree limit which many scientists say is already too high.